Geoffrey Lean is Britain's longest-serving environmental correspondent, having pioneered reporting on the subject almost 40 years ago.

The horrors hidden in the draft National Planning Policy Framework

Now you see it. . . Lathkill Dale, with Ricklow Quarry ahead, in the Derbyshire Peak District (Photo: Alamy)

Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. Day after day for the past two and a half weeks, this newspaper has been publishing devastating revelations about the Government’s so-called planning reforms – disclosing, for example, that they were largely drawn up by developers; that, despite ministers’ assurances, they do threaten the green belt; and that they have already been quietly put into effect even though they are still draft proposals out for formal consultation.

But, believe me, there’s more – much more. For the further you look into the slim, 52-page draft National Planning Policy Framework that has caused all the fuss, and its accompanying documents, the more horrors there are. They contain more unexploded mines per square inch than the most liberally strewn battlefield.